Your time to communicate starts now

Back when I worked in the bureaucracy of the public sector I came across a few managers who had an odd habit when it came to communicating important things.

Because it was important they wanted to communicate it in person, but they weren’t the kind of people who would just wander over to your office and tell you. Somehow they never quite felt comfortable enough with the informality of that. It was as though important news demands a certain solemnity in the way it is conveyed, almost a bit of a ritual.

So instead they waited until their next scheduled face to face meeting. Even if that was weeks away and even if the information was really, really important.

For some of them the problem was even worse. Their failure to communicate wasn’t just because they couldn’t be informal, but they had actually decided that doing everything on a planned schedule was the best way to do it! It wouldn’t matter how important the information was, they weren’t going to mention a word of it until Thursday because that’s when our next meeting was scheduled and they could prepare for the ‘solemn ritual of conveying important information’. Until then, they buried the information in their brain and wouldn’t even remember it until the alloted time.

I’m sure you can guess this drove me mad. I even started to nonchantly stroll past their office when I knew something was up and ask “heard anything interesting recently?”. Even with that prompt some of the buggers would still not tell me until the scheduled moment. Infuriating.